


The Path Never Taken

by Belladonna_Q



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Art collaboration, Case Fic, M/M, Murder, Self-Doubt, What-If, reapersun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-21
Updated: 2016-10-21
Packaged: 2018-08-23 18:10:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8337634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Belladonna_Q/pseuds/Belladonna_Q
Summary: “I could have saved her.”It’s embarrassing, really, as the sentence tumbles out of his mouth without any conscious thought. In the silent muffle of the hallway, the forensic team pauses, eyes flicking to each other in quiet confusion.“John,” Sherlock says, and there’s a touch on his arm.  John pulls away.He drops the gun.





	

“I could have saved her.”

It’s embarrassing, really, as the sentence tumbles out of his mouth without any conscious thought. In the silent muffle of the hallway, the forensic team pauses, eyes flicking to each other in quiet confusion.

“John,” Sherlock says, and there’s a touch on his arm.  

John pulls away.

He drops the gun.

“John,” he hears, louder with concern, while the weapon thuds to the carpet.

“Collect that,” he hears a snap of fingers and catches Greg Lestrade out of his peripheral vision. “Bag it. Any casings?”

“Just the one,” John hears faintly. Faintly because he’s walking away, heading outside, body feeling listless, as if in a dream.

“Hey, we need to talk, hey… _hey_ —Sherlock—“

“Give us one minute.”

“Stop him, we need to question—“

“In a _minute_ , Lestrade,” Sherlock snaps, sounding as frayed as he most certainly looks.

Sherlock doesn’t make a grab for him, instead lining up in step behind him and simply following. John excuses himself, managing to sound polite and calm, as he squeezes by several officers and emergency personnel. He makes it outside, crispy autumn air filling his lungs as he finally manages to take a full breath in what had felt like hours.

He walks down the path, circling around a patrol car, feeling gravel crunch beneath his trainers. He reaches the edge of the warehouse, onto an old, wooden deck. He stops and takes another breath as a seagull swoops down to the rocks below.

“You’re in shock.”     

“I’m fine.” It’s so automatic, John is fairly sure he’d begun saying it before Sherlock had even begun to comment. He turns briefly, catching a glance at the detective, who looks thoroughly as exhausted as no doubt both of them feel.

“Do you,” Sherlock pauses, looking into him, the concern acid etched into his eyes. The detective stuffs both hands into his coat pockets. “Do you need to speak to someone?” The words sound just as awkward coming from Sherlock as it looks. John watches as the man rummages in his pockets out of rote instinct, rooting for familiar cigarettes that are no longer there. For that welcome reprieve under so much uncomfortable anxiety.

“I am speaking to someone,” John says with a single and obvious motion to the detective. He tries to smile but it fails, so he drops it and turns back to the water.

Sherlock snorts at this. “I meant perhaps someone more qualified.”

“No.”

“No?”

John shakes his head. His left hand begins to tremble and he fists it tightly, angered that he knows Sherlock couldn’t help but notice.

“There was nothing you could have done, John,” and Sherlock means it so sincerely, it’s as if John’s acute guilt manages to also scar and affect those around him. “You saved everyone.”

“No, not _everyone_ , Sherlock. If I had saved _everyone_ , then _she_ wouldn’t be _dead_.” He spits out the words, the self-fury flooding him as if injected directly into his chest.

Sherlock, wisely, remains silent while John calms himself, feeling the bite of wood in his palms as he grips the edge of the deck, leaning up against its banister. It takes several moments before John can finally swallow and breathe again.

“You did what you knew needed to be done,” Sherlock begins very, very carefully. “Our first case… Do you remember?”

“The cabbie, Jefferson Hope. Of course I remember. But that … that’s not this, Sherlock.” He looks up to a gull which glides smoothly in the air. He follows its movement before bringing his gaze down to the grain of wood at his fingertips. “Do we even know her name?”

Sherlock is quiet before, “Not yet.”

“I didn’t hesitate. Not one moment. She brought that gun up to that boy’s temple and I didn’t even think. Now she’s dead.”

“You saved his life.”

“I didn’t have to take hers. I aimed for her head. I could have. I could have shot anywhere else. A leg. Her shoulder. It would have been enough.”

“You don’t know that. John, you do not know that. There’s a great percentage that startling her could have caused her to—“

“I wanted to be the one,” and now John’s voice shakes, closing his eyes. Sherlock falls silent, and only the doctor’s imagination aids him in what his friend’s expression could possibly hold. “I was so _angry_ ,” he seethes out the sentence. “Weeks, Sherlock. Weeks of her riddles and shite clues and her taking and hurting those kids and I… I saw an opportunity. I took it.”

“And I'm glad for it, John. I am glad you were there. That you saw what no one else could.” Sherlock has stopped, and John opens his eyes. "Lestrade will need to question you, but I haven't any doubt you'll be seen as anything less than a hero. What you did does not make you a bad person."

“A hero," John chuckles at the word, shaking his head. "Do you ever wonder what could have been, if things were different?”

Sherlock frowns, clearly feeling lost but he attempts to follow. “Different how?”

“If your life had been different.”

“As in… a different household? A different upbringing?”

“No. No, I mean. Have you ever felt it could have been one single, small decision in your life that changed the whole of it?”

Sherlock considers this with a seriousness John hadn’t thought possible for such a hypothetical question. Feeling led, Sherlock asks, “Have you a ‘moment’ in mind?”

“I got coffee.”

Sherlock stares with a tilt of his head, but says nothing.

John continues, “I got coffee, Sherlock. I don’t know why. I’m a bloody tea man and we both well know it. But on a beautiful, chilly day I went for coffee and I haven’t the faintest idea as to why. I went to a café I’d never been to, ordered a tall double shot which I’d never had, and began to walk back on a path I’d never taken when I am interrupted. Interrupted by a man I haven’t seen in a decade mind, who happens to see me walking from the café and he stops me. We have a chat—“

“Mike—“

“We have a chat and he mentions a friend of his, in need of a flatmate.” John stops and turns to look at the water below, watching as it froths on the rocks. "A single decision." He says nothing more.

The silence stretches. Sherlock looks behind them to the team of officers. Lestrade paces in the distance, but is well enough distracted. He turns to John once again. He fiddles with a glove in his pocket.

“And the rest, as we say, is history?” Sherlock attempts lightly.

John snorts and braces himself against the banister. “I suppose that is what they will say, yes…. But what if I hadn’t.”

“Hadn't gotten… coffee?”

“Yes.”

Sherlock frowns, “But you had…”

“I know that I had, Sherlock. I’m asking, what if I _hadn’t_ … I was on such a dark and lonely path… I wonder what might have happened. The person I could have really become.”

“If you hadn’t gotten coffee.”

“If I hadn’t met you.” His face flushes, the sentiment coming unbidden. 

Sherlock's smile is small as he reaches, holding out his hand. John takes it. 

"Come along now, John Watson."

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to do a little ficlet thing for Watson Washington/Sherlock Seattle :) 
> 
> Art by [Reapersun ](http://www.reapersun.tumblr.com)and fanfic by[ BelladonnaQ](http://www.belladonnaq.tumblr.com)


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